A federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump from placing 2,200 workers at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on paid leave. The judge barred Trump from doing so just hours before it was due to happen.
A temporary restraining order was issued by Judge Carl Nichols after the lawsuit was filed by two unions trying to save the agency from shutting down.
The order will remain in place until February 14.
Trump on social media posted, "Close it down".
"USAID is driving the radical left crazy, and there is nothing they can do about it because the way in which the money has been spent, so much of it fraudulently, is totally unexplainable," said Trump.
Trump has earlier announced plans to dismantle the overseas aid agency by putting nearly all of the agency's 10,000 employees on leave sparing around 600 workers.
Around 500 employees were already put on administrative leave.
The American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees argued that the government was violating the US Constitution. The unions alleged that Trump was planning to shut down the agency without the approval of Congress.
"All USAID employees currently on administrative leave shall be reinstated...and shall be given complete access to email, payment, and security notification systems until that date (Feb 14)," wrote Nichols.
Nichols also stressed that his order was not a decision on the employees' request to roll back the administration's sudden move of shutting down the agency.
The Trump administration and Musk, who is running the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), made a quick move on Friday to shut down USAID, the world's biggest aid donor.
Almost all the funding for the agency was stopped after Trump took office. "This is a full-scale gutting of virtually all the personnel of an entire agency," Karla Gilbride, the attorney for the employee associations, told the judge.
